Pandas head for new home

A PAIR of pandas left China yesterday on a long- awaited goodwill journey to their new home in Taiwan, in the latest move symbolising the warming ties between the two countries.

State television carried live coverage of Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan being carefully loaded onto a special charter flight and the plane lifting off from Chengdu airport in Sichuan province for the three-hour flight to Taiwan.

The cage holding the four-year-olds had pictures of pandas painted on it, and similar pictures were on the headrests and walls inside the EVA Air 747.